Belated Fea
by Furius
Summary: A belated bday fic for Le Chat Noir concerning the life and times of Celegorm, son of Feanor.


A Belated Birthday fic for Le Chat Noir.  
  
Because he heard the voices in the morning mist, because he remained silent even as his ears rang with the sound of steel and screams, and because he cared enough that he should have refused, he died.  
  
He had always been silent, my littlest brother, my poor boy, whom I taught to hold a flute, to sound the horn, and still later, to use the bow. My brother, the last of us, whom mother and father abandoned in pursuit of their own pleasures, whom our brothers ignored as they wondered away in eternal Spring's restlessness.  
  
But I stayed with him. I was in the house when he was born. I stayed when the workshops once again became home for those to whom we were given. I remained in the house and took care of him, him and his twin, with pale red fire a halo around their heads and small curious faces that reminded me of all that could be beauty and peace.  
  
For all that I seek in the woods, I found part of them in Ambarussa. Telui and Pitya, they knew no one other than me, we were strangers in a household that flashed red and gold in a terrible cycle, a mad whirlwind to mere babes newly came, and a horrible storm to one searching for a lost childhood. I did know my father before I could look at him level eyed.  
  
It had all changed once upon a time. One evening mother and I went to Feanaro's house, and there we stayed. She never heeded me much, and that I preferred, but he did, as if anxious to repair some wrong that he did. Those vivid eyes in that face, like yet unalike my own, pierced and wounded me. I was afraid of the stranger's intention, especially a stranger who wore a circlet around his brow and who I was required to call father when for all my life previous he was "milord prince".  
  
The voices, no matter how beautiful, the faces, though fair beyond measure, the house, noble and great, we did not belong there, Ambarussa and me. I saw it in their eyes. They had my eyes, of the lightest shades of gray bright with grandfather Mahtan's tint of green, of a certain simple wildness that even Feanor's could not match. We had no guide into the intricacies that were so rudely thrust upon us. We did not need them. I believed and knew even then, I did not need them, for only grief would follow. It is the story of the House of Fire, what burns will consume, and die.  
  
When they could sit, I took them into the gardens where Makalaure's voice lured the birds. When they could walk, I guided them through a short foliaged path. That was home, I told them, pleased to hear Ambarussa's voice in assent, soft with babyhood yet lilting with the accent I gave them, of those who dwelled at the foot of Taniquetil's mountain, where I had lived for a long while.  
  
We ran away from the gray clouds and sharp implements that the craft demanded, that father, mother, and brothers learnt and sometimes reveled in. Feanaro still felt guilty, I never learnt to bend metals and glass to my will because I rather the woods, and he did not dare say otherwise. And mother, she never cared. Therefore, as small hands grew large enough to hold a chisel, they held reins instead. We rode far away from the house where we were born, and I was pleased. It was three among nine at least, enough for company. There, I have brothers who did not scorn me for my yellow hair or my indifferent manners for words, metal, the extravagant spectacle that is the House of Fire. Yet the odds, so important at first, dissipated once I saw those eyes, dissimilar in all its likeness to mine, look at me above the night fire, for a strange fear began to stir in me, that I had bound them when I sought to free them.  
  
And perhaps I did.   
  
Ashes and dust, the rough grains of sand that made shifting noises beneath my feet seemed to shout bitter accusations as I stepped further away from the shore into the dark waves. Blood smells sour in the aftermath, and appeared black beneath the moonlight, sitting sharp silver in all its cold cruelty with a stray star hanging beneath by an invisible string. Gray is the shore, and deeper gray are the silhouettes of the figures that now scavenge among the ruins of Sirion.   
  
_Where is Elros? Where is Elrond? Where is their father, the mortal lord of Moriquendi who returns not to his home? Where is their mother, child of Peredhel, who flew with a star upon her breast? _  
  
The beach is rife with torchlight and shouts. The injured inhabitants of Sirion, the soldiers of Feanorian mark, and a red-haired Noldor prince whose guilt ran deeper than the darkness of Doriath's forest, calls out for them. And a lone voice rose shrill above the rest, uncannily beautiful in this forsaken night because he refused to grieve, and his tenor hovered upon an edge. He would not mourn, the golden-toned said to the wind, because he could not stop if he started; he has relinquished the right the moment his fingers wrapped themselves around steel that brought end to a song.  
  
A further way at the eaves of the woods, away from the ruin from the city Nelyafinwë and Canofinwë destroyed, Atarinke sits with Carnistir, brine drying upon their hair, dark as night, and setting watch upon trees tall with age. They do not speak, and their faces are grim with wariness. A small black knife whittles an image from a small piece of log while my dark faced brother sullenly, carefully, skillfully, adds another complicated knot to a growing collection. He had found a thin string hanging from his tunic upon the sorrow tossed ships of Losgar; mother had mended his clothes and forgotten to snap the dangling line. I remember him staring at it even as heaven and earth hurled around us.   
  
Though boughs were sturdy, yet the leaves rustled with soft voices. The irony of the living and the dead immortals confused them, and they wept, being powerless. After a while, something dropped into the whispers, and a noise of surprise from the speechless startled the small animals that made their home there. Caught between branches and its shoots, a small carving suspended precariously above a bird's nest. It was a figurine of family three. The faces, shaped from skilled hands were undeniably recognizable: Curufinwë, Alcariel and Tyelperinquar their son…  
  
They stay for their own reasons.   
  
My brothers do not weep for my Ambarussa. I alone give them my tears, as I had given them everything I owned, my life, and my death included. If I have forsworn the oath and doomed my fea to the Void in lingering on the Hither Shores for them, so be it. The Everlasting Darkness waits me in Mandos, and I would not have anyone say that I do not heed the summons because I was afraid, that the sons of Feanor were cowards whose words are without honor like their deeds, treacherous in all their desperation.   
  
I have always been Tyelkormo first and Turkafinwë second, and no mandate from the most gloriously deranged elf will sway me. I stay because I could not abide loneliness, because I did not wish them to be alone. Ambarussa has each other, but it had never been them alone. I watched them this day and others, and saw with mingling fear and fascination that they no longer flinched at the instant where blade met blood-warmed naked skin. Eyes grim with silent fury, yet each step, a practiced movement, was exact, precise, beautifully synchronized. I shuddered, watching them cleft head from shoulders, hands from wrists, armor darkening and peeling off of them by the hour till that unmistakably, there they were, copper aflame around their bloodied crown. They were my children, and yet these are the deeds of my father's children. Rather, my father's wishes.   
  
The twilight had seen the slain, arm upon arms flesh upon flesh that would scorn each other in living resting upon the same sandy table. The survivors had gathered up the bodies and piled them onto pyres like so many grotesque centerpiece for doom's banquet. We burned them. The fear had left, and the remnants of existence were neither practical, nor healthy, to witness for long. A signal had been given sometime after sunset, and for a short, fervent while, the fire cleansed. Each face, fair and fell, thought in the moment that the flames matched their own bright eyes. Noses dulled to the acrid scent breathed only the night air, tasting slightly of salt…  
  
They found them- Elrond and Elros- within a glittering cave sheltered by light waterfalls. The soldiers came upon one, then the other, so I heard Makalaure's voice call out in two startled cries even as I wondered some distance away, taking tentative steps in my strange state. I could care less because Ambarussa died, and I grieved alone, as a damned fea…  
  
Maitimo's soldiers had been weary when they set out the search, and so it was with no great cheer when the camp heard their herald's call. Among the noises of metal and hoarse cries of names, I heard the piercing screeching of the children. Even now, the children struggle, and Nelyafinwe and Canofinwe debate the fates of these small prisoners of war, their words harsh enough to carry by the pondering wind. They speak of those remembered, who can only be remembered, living inside memories twisted by circumstances of fate. _What would he do..what would she do..what should we do…Celegorm would wish them saved…He would not wish us to abandon them children…_  
  
I hear them, my senses more acute than ever, though I do not want to. Why should I care of the voices of those who argue the fate of other's children, what of our own? Would not one of my brothers mourn for Ambarussa, and their childhood companions, who came because they admired, nay, idolized the insanity of our apostate father.  
  
Like the sand that worship the waves, to borrow a broken phrase, so we let it overwhelm us, all the while imagining the greater things it may lead us, never having the wit to think that with greater ambition, came the greater tempest that would not _let us be_ even if we desired it. It has been long taken to shape, to form, to alter, to destroy, recreate and create with the impunity of its very naturalness. Who were we to say different when it took us, far away from our shores, from tainted pools to watch clouded skies dancing together with alien shadows at some foreign shore.  
  
There was no escape, and so reason must save us by adapting us to the suited form. We accepted it so easily, and counted the journey as our own. Idolatry of the mad because we wished for madness ourselves; and it would not be madness when the purposes of passion and a subtle, if perverse reason, conjoined. Once upon a time, upon another subject, Finwe called such things philosophy, and laughed because little Artanis told him upon his knees and said the conversations of nothings and everything were "merely fashion, one of those things that would be unseemly if we do not heed to opinion, as grandchildren of Finwe, a king"  
  
Even so, I never believed. I convinced myself that Everlasting Darkness did not exist even when words wrestled themselves out of my mouth to swear the Oath.   
  
When he his glance fell on me, I was lost, and I knew then that he counted me among his. It was the first spell he laid on me, though I had seen it on others, and often wondered at the changes it wrought. I understood, when my will bent to his. I saw myself and none else, and I knew him- he was pure and good, worthy to follow.  
  
All that I ever did upon the Hither Shores, I followed him, his likeness, Atarinke indeed…For Feanaro had had stood among nothingness during the mindon, his spirit the brightest flame and noblest fire, beckoned me; and within him and without, I saw myself, at least, a part of the self that I never knew I had but recognized nonetheless. And in that dark place with the single light, he eluded me so that pursuit was the only choice…He hold the answers he says.  
  
Ambarussa walked away from us, and hunted alone while the lingering of Feanaro possessed me. And on that day in Doriath, before Dior's stroke fell, their silence suddenly sounded loud to my ears. People screamed, shouted, bellowed, barked, bawled around us, but Ambarussa was silent. Within the moment of my wonder, my hroa lay still in front of the feet of The Beautiful.  
  
Hurtling, plummeting down a spiraled path, I took a breath, all came to a stop, and I hovered in the darkness without the living light lead me. I sighed. It was fulfilled then, and turned my thoughts to as I last remembered myself.  
  
You must be naked to enter my halls! The Doomsman, for in my inmost thoughts, I knew him, said in that hour so that the sound seemed to crush me, drawing me toward something all around me. I was to be scattered. But I naysay him because I wondered still, and guilt and regret flooded back to the whole place where the fire left it empty.  
  
I remembered the forest where we last hunted the bisons, and I remembered another forest, deep with tall trees that belied all the creatures under the fragmented first lights from Arien's chariot. We had danced there, having missed similar so long. It is a short path to the clearing where pale grass grew a delicate, tentative green.  
  
Then, as I walked into myself sitting who sat with my brothers basking in the sun, I walked into the copse, and it was soldiers I see, Maitimo's soldiers.  
  
Ambarussa were there, standing, staring each other. All I wanted to do then was apologize. I never left their sides afterwards; there was no thought of darkness, of doom, but only my Ambarussa whom I abandoned, and the sudden deep sorrow that I felt.  
  
I could walk upon ground the ground. I still feel the leaves and twigs pressing into the soles of my boots as I followed our march away, to other places, and to Sirion ten days ago. One difference- I do not eat, nor could I be touched, or touch.   
  
For that brief moment where they saw me as their fear sped on the morrow of this day, they looked at me, and I hoped they understood.  
  
Memory serves as reality in death of the body, and contemplation is the fate of the fea. Infallibility of Elven memory be damned! My father's legacy thrice cursed! This is why I wonder these shores, in the relative silence of the night, upon this cliff, wishing I could fall.  
  
They burned Ambarussa, and the images and sound flashes in my mind, in endless repetition. There! The end! I had cried to the heavens as the fire consumed the pyre.  
  
The end! Do you hear me! Now let me go! To Everlasting Darkness if you wish.  
  
But he does not. I remain, deep into this cold night when he thought he should have left already.  
  
There were always rumors concerning the Halls of Mandos. What was is it like, an impudent child once asked Feanaro, and do you visit your mother there? Notwithstanding, Feanaro damned himself to Everlasting Darkness….One that I have not for a moment believed in.  
  
It is a temperament. There had never been a physical barrier between one and the other. All that is the Houses of the Dead are the memories we bear in this life, so I knew that I live and walk in Middle-Earth as shadow of my former self. The Darkness we so afeared is but one.  
  
"Telvo, Pityo" Maglor murmurs beside me, his voice layered enough to infuse all he can say in two words, and lays a hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off. He can still see me, wandering fea that I am, for I have not fully shed myself yet to one so gifted as he. He sees and feels all, and spreads them, for that is art, and he alone is the true artist of the House of Fire.  
  
Still, he is my brother, and I do not know how long I can last without running away, without being taken by the wind and wandering drifting hither and thither. Perhaps, it will be rest…of a sort…I turned around and saw the children, one each by his side, strangely quiet, strangely small.  
  
Curse those looks, curse that terrible beauty! Grey eyes clear as an evening sky within strange faces gaze sullenly out at me, or perhaps, past me. Twins…  
  
"Telui, Pitya," I whisper, and heard my voice call upon the high air of Manwe to wish that the darkness might be forgiven for the children who could but follow.  
  
Makalaure's face clouds, nods curtly at me, and disappeared with them into the twilight. "I will not understand." He says.  
  
And I knew then. It is over.   
  
I have never run faster, even fresh in youth in Tirion, as I do when I run up the cliff where Elwing leapt. The rocks sting my hands though they do not touch and the taste of the sea upon my tongue, ever so near, becomes burned.  
  
There is a small corner of trampled grass at the edge, where her foot left off at midday. I avoid it and shakily, approbation a sharp thorn, step off the precipice.  
  
I find myself standing in air.  
  
My fingers, no longer shaking unknotted the leather string that held my hair bound and drops it into the depth below. I did not see it disappear. His parting words had echoed ever since I denied him first.  
  
"You must be naked to enter my halls!" His voice echoes in the expanses still. The world, it seems.  
  
And from above, it rains.  
  
Droplets of water soak my clothing, my hair, yet it is not so heavy that it obscures my sight. Beneath me, the sea has turned gray, a hissing mist lies upon it like a pall.   
  
Collars unlaced, yet the metal on the clasps of my tunic has become slippery and hard to undo, so I tore it, indignant of memory and nostalgia that assails me of tender eyes and slender fingers of my beloved. The pieces floated away from me, invisible…  
  
Boots have slipped off my legs as numb fingers slowly pull my belt off. I drift further, fancying that it is the hroa of another that I watch unclothing himself so that he might be no more, but pure fea, worthy of his fate.  
  
Tyelkormo pulls his shirt off and feel the tickling sensation of rivulets running down bare arms and chest, the skin shimmering with the suddenly fiery diamond lights upon fair skin. With every piece of clothing, lighter becomes his consciousness, and the colors of the world fades. From far away, he is a ray, hailing good weather...  
  
Finally, unlacing his breeches, he drops them, and watches with a vague nonchalance as the wind carries them away to another, some distant home…  
  
He stand, a stark fea hovering above the waters, feeling the wind rustle his hair. It is not enough. he close his eyes and the wind dies around him.   
  
Tyelkormo dives, his nakedness a key.


End file.
